The Iraq-Niger-Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame affair

“Fair Game” Movie To Relive Iraq-Niger-Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame Controversy
Posted by Joel Wing

Excerpt:

The U.S. and the world are about to relive the Iraq-Niger-Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame affair when the movie “Fair Game” is released in theaters on November 5, 2010. Joe Wilson was a former American diplomat, and his wife Valerie Plame was a CIA analyst. In 2001 it was reported that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger for its nuclear weapons program. In 2002, Wilson went on a trip to Niger for the CIA, and reported that he didn’t believe the story was true. In January 2003 President George Bush claimed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa in his State of the Union address, and that began the controversy. Wilson and the White House began a war of words over the Niger story. Wilson ended up exaggerating and embellishing his role in the matter, while the White House tried to discredit him using his wife Plame over an event that proved to be false from the beginning.

In 2001 freelance spy Rocco Martino and Italy’s Italian Military Information and Security Service (SISMI) began disseminating the claim that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from the western African nation of Niger.

The two used forged and real documents that they put together in 2000 to make their case, with SISMI even breaking into the Niger embassy in Rome to steal letterhead and seals to make the papers seem more realistic. SISMI and Martino passed the story along to the French, British, and Americans. This created an echo chamber as Britain then forwarded the report to the CIA, and France told England.

To read the article click on:
http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.com/2010/11/fair-game-movie-to-relive-iraq-niger.html